Marin's a generous tipper, as we all should be. Though maybe not this generous or everyone would be broke from visiting Starbucks once a week. But whatever, she really likes coffee and making friends.
Okay, making-of talk next. I like to share the process or whatever because I find it interesting what people go through to make comic pages.
So, this page ended up really interesting. This whole scene was going to be five pages, but I ended up with two extra pages: one I just added and one because I spaced out the original dialog onto more pages. I did this because as I started laying things out, and with as much as people were talking, my layouts became a jumbled mess. SO, I spaced things out more and solved a lot of issues. This page, when I went to lay it out, I thought well...it's okay. I wasn't sold, but it seemed to work. Then I started to do my sketches and realized that nothing was working. The flow was off, the page overall felt weird and it didn't have the impact I wanted. I started my layout over, just moving stuff around in Manga Studio (yay!) and it really paid off. Originally, Marin was going to be putting the money into the jar in the first panel, but it was hard to draw that as an action. With her arm in front of her, the pose was jumbled and hard to read. By giving that action it's own panel, it fixed the issues I was having with the rhythm and really emphasized what was actually happening. So, there's your bit of comic-making nerd stuff for the day.
Anyway, in making comics, most of my knowledge is based off of what I remember from storyboarding. I think the two go hand in hand pretty well, and a lot of the resources for making comics aren't super detailed about what makes for good layouts. I guess the theory is that everyone will have their own style of getting information across, so it's hard to really go into detail there. (And yes, I read Making Comics by Scott McCloud. It's very good.) The best resource I've ever found is Storyboarding the Simpsons Way. It has some great information about how to set up a shot based on who has all the power in that scene, how to emphasize and focus on certain things, how to make a scene readable, etc. Kind of a goldmine. If it weren't for years of storyboarding learnin', I would have a hell of a time on this comic, let me tell you.
If you're reading this, then I'm probably in Mississippi or driving towards it! Gotta go see the Southern fam and eat food til Saturday. I think I can still manage to reply to stuff on my phone. It's a bit sketchy but it worked last time, so we're good. Otherwise, enjoy winter solstice or christmas or hanukkah or whatever you celebrate!